Chinese non-government organisation has come up with a blacklist of 4,000 multinational companies that it charged with seriously polluting the air. The blacklist is seen as a thinly veiled statement from the government, which has suggested earlier that foreign companies played a key role in causing pollution.
The blacklist released by the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environment Affairs includes joint ventures involving Ford and Toyota and several major companies including Michelin China, Sina-Mars Group APP in China.
The timing of the release of blacklist is significant as China and India have been arguing at the ongoing Bali meet on climate change that western nations should shoulder greater responsibility for cleaning up the environment as they caused a greater amount of pollution as compared to developing nations.
Blacklists are a potent Chinese way of tackling any company trying to be difficult. The government’s environment protection agency recently sent a list of 50 polluting companies to financial institutions with the advice that they should not be provided with funds.
"We started collecting the records of polluters in 2004," Ma Jun, IPEA director said to show that it had not deliberately timed the release of the blacklist. The institute has been involved in creating a database on air quality in 150 cities in the industrialised southern parts of China.
The institute collects information about the roles played by major polluters from local and central environmental protection agencies and also from news reports.
It had earlier come out with a blacklist of water polluters in which it listed 9,400 companies.
Significantly, only 280 out of the 9,400 water polluters were shown as foreign companies as compared to the big number of 4,000 foreign companies shown as air polluters in the latest blacklist.
Ma promised to do more research in northern China and come up with another list of polluters. He said 50 of the companies in the list of water polluters have taken action and cleared their names.
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